Our Calling and Our Promise

Providence Health & Services Alaska continues a vibrant history of serving the needs of communities in Alaska for 116 years. Together with community-focused organizations and innovative partners, Providence Health & Services Alaska reaches beyond the clinical setting to meet the needs of today, while transforming conditions for a better tomorrow. Our mission calls us to care for everyone, especially those who are poor and vulnerable. Community benefit investments are an important way we partner to create healthier communities, together.

In 2017, Providence Health & Services Alaska invested more than $65 million in community benefit. We also were honored to complete Community Health Needs Assessments with our partners to identify the greatest areas of unmet needs in communities we serve across the state. What we discovered among our top priorities represents the people at the heart of our mission:

Poverty, including homelessness and food insecurity;

Mental health and substance abuse;

Access to affordable health care and services; and

Healthy behaviors.

Here a few of the inspiring ways our investments are working in our communities:

The Street Medicine Program, where medical residents who are part of the Alaska Family Medicine Residency volunteer to go into the community and provide care to patients who are homeless and living on the streets of Anchorage;

A program in Seward called Sources of Strength, which works with youth to spread positivity and eliminate traditional – and often unhealthy – social norms; and

Funding to expand Providence Palliative Care Fellowship Program, which trains medical professionals to provide spiritual care, health care and social care to patients and their families to help relieve the symptoms, pain and stress of serious illnesses.